Althouse: "[Griffin] Spikoski’s parents told filmmakers that they decided to remove their son from high school as his dedication to gaming deepened."

April 2, 2019

"[Griffin] Spikoski’s parents told filmmakers that they decided to remove their son from high school as his dedication to gaming deepened."

"With his notoriety increasing... Spikoski struggled to manage two worlds — and two personalities — that felt increasingly divergent. In person, Spikoski is shy and anxious. In the virtual world, he is confident, playful and mischievous. 'I think he made it through three days of high school and he had issues every day that he was there — either being distracted in class because people wanted his attention or feeling like he had to be Sceptic at school,' Connolly said. Spikoski’s parents said their son had been pushing them to allow him to pursue online schooling. With his success growing, they eventually relented. 'I was playing games all day and watching videos, that was just my life,' Spikoski told filmmakers when asked about his parents’ reaction to his request. 'They already knew.'... 'We don’t really see that you need a 9-to-5 job to get by in life and you can actually have fun with a career and enjoy your love and do what you love and make a living out of it,' [his father said]."

From "This teenager started playing video games 18 hours a day. Now he makes more money than most adults. Meet Griffin Spikoski, the new definition of a student 'athlete'" (WaPo).

35 comments:

mockturtle said...: Somewhat similar to Bill Gates' childhood. Some children are exceptional. Problem is, most kids are NOT exceptional and need a firm hand and guidance but they see someone like this and say, "Hey, that could be me!".; 4/2/19, 5:57 PM
Rick said...: Another lottery profession to lure kids from the difficult path of making themselves productive. Great for those who make it, shitty for the overwhelming majority who don't.; 4/2/19, 6:08 PM
Rob said...: The divorced parents are both wearing "Misfits" tee-shirts. There must be a story behind that.; 4/2/19, 6:19 PM
Blue@9 said...: I was born 30 years too early. I'm still good at games, but there's no way I can compete now with my old and slow reaction times. Damn, I coulda made a living playing games. Stupid college and law school.; 4/2/19, 6:23 PM
gilbar said...: hmmm, so; he works EIGHTEEN HOURS a day, and 'makes more money than most adults'?

If i worked eighteen hours a day, I think I'd make more money than most adults
let's check? YEs, I sure would!!!

for 2018, Median household income in the U.S. rose to an estimated $59,055
Oh, wait? That comes to $30/hr @ 8 hours a day (5 days a week, 50 weeks a year)
At 18 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year; $60,000 comes to $13.34/hr

So, if a 14 year makes the average wage at walmart ($13.79), and sneaks into working 18hrs a week; he'll 'make more money than most adults'

THE KEY seems to be working MORE THAN twice what most adults work
As a parent, i'm SURE we ALL want this for our children!; 4/2/19, 6:25 PM
rcocean said...: You can make money at anything these days. You can even play games, make a youtube of it, and make money off that. you don't need to hustle people at chess anymore. Every electronic game has its tournaments and prize money.

Its a crazy world out there!; 4/2/19, 6:26 PM
Leland said...: I think he could make good money as quality control tester for various video game companies. I don't necessarily agree with the "student athlete" concept, but you certainly can make good money doing things you enjoy. Video games is a big industry, and there are jobs for people with his dedication and talent. But like every such job; not everyone will be good enough to get such a gig.; 4/2/19, 6:33 PM
bagoh20 said...: At least I won't have to tell him him to "Get the hell off my lawn!"; 4/2/19, 6:33 PM
Karen of Texas said...: My son started playing video games on the PC at about age 2 sitting on his dad's lap. This was back in '94. If you're old enough, you remember what games on a PC in '94 were like. Along came Wolfenstein, Quake, Marathon Man... old school stuff now but at the time, woohoo. Anyway, he decided in kindergarten that he wanted to be a coder like his dad (dad did not do games however) and by about 8th grade, he'd decided he would work in the video game industry.

He played a lot of games. He made decent grades in high school - while playing a lot of games. I have no doubt that he wouldn't have gotten in to nor earned his degree in Real Time Interactive Simulation - aka as the guys who code the physics behind the game playing - if he hadn't invested the play time. He has a great head on his shoulders. I now know he could have made much better grades in high school; but he told me he would have flamed out with all the hours he had to put in to get his degree if he had put that much effort into high school. Most of high school was a waste for him. He knew what he wanted to do and the classes that helped him reach his goal were where he put in the effort. The others, he did enough to pass. He does admit, however, that he might have liked some scholarship money to offset some of his student loans, but you can't tell teenagers anything. :| You gamers out there, buy Borderlands 3 and help out a debt saddled young man.; 4/2/19, 6:46 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Making piles of money poisoning more young minds. yay!; 4/2/19, 6:58 PM
Anonymous said...: ‘Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life,’ said nobody knows who. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/09/02/job-love/; 4/2/19, 7:27 PM
Jessica said...: This seems awful to me. I honestly don't understand how a minor (or an adult for that matter) could maintain any mental health this way.; 4/2/19, 7:46 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: Wayne et al in Letterkenny spent an entire episode declaiming that 'Find something...' line.; 4/2/19, 7:49 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Not my circus but what a hideous way to live.; 4/2/19, 7:57 PM
cubanbob said...: This kid is playing Ready Player One in real life except he isn't going to win the Big Prize.; 4/2/19, 8:22 PM
Gk1 said...: Wow, he sounds like he is quickly on his way to be a well rounded individual. Great job parents of the year! God help him if he loses power for a few days.; 4/2/19, 8:37 PM
rightguy said...: All that time and effort spent and all he's done is move zillions of zeros and ones around in a box. Absolutely nothing produced. Not much of a life if you ask me.; 4/2/19, 8:43 PM
stephen cooper said...: Poor little sap. I hope that he soon realizes he is just a cog in a wheel, and that he needs to establish real relationships that have nothing to do with the powers that be who have so enchanted him, and that if he does not he will have wasted his life in an embarrassing way.

Picasso spent a similar amount of time learning real art and even that did not help, in the end he was a loser.

Sometimes I read comment threads on blogs hosted by guys in their forties and fifties who are still into "Video Gaming" it is just fucking sad. They are all so tough and ready to act tough and I am thinking: "where were you when I was in the real world?"; 4/2/19, 9:02 PM
madAsHell said...: Can he build a fire? Find shelter?; 4/2/19, 9:07 PM
FullMoon said...: Making money while having fun doing what he likes. Good for him.; 4/2/19, 9:11 PM
stephen cooper said...: In case you wonder why I say Picasso was a loser,reflect on this: when he was 60 he had five ex-girlfriends who hated him and one woman who spent time with him because he was rich.

He rinsed and repeated that in his 70s.

Next time you (whether you are male or female) are somewhere looking at a Picasso painting ask yourself, or say to yourself - here I am, looking at this painting, standing next to a woman or a man who loves me, and this poor sap Pablo never once in his life could look across the pillow in the morning and see someone he loved as a man should love a woman, he never once had a woman look at him with that love in her eyes that women have when they are with a man who will be there for her forever....

Sad!

Still, lots of his pictures are fun to look at, in a sort of cool un-complex way. Nothing deep or profoundly true about any of his academic and prize-winning pictures, but at least he tried, and was, in his sad way, not completely unassuming.; 4/2/19, 9:11 PM
stephen cooper said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/2/19, 9:12 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: Life is a contact sport (yeah, I probably read that on a t-shirt somewhere). There's no way this ends well for the kid. His parents have basically acquiesced to this kid kneecapping himself.; 4/2/19, 9:42 PM
FullMoon said...: From behind the paywall.

“It’s kind of like my job Griffin told ABC affiliate WABC-TV, noting he plays about eight hours a day in his Long Island home.

Last year, that income totaled nearly $200,000.

After creating Sceptic Gaming Inc., the teenager’s parents have hired a financial adviser and an accountant to help him manage his money, WABC-TV reported.

the reality is that electric sports (known as “e-sports”) have become big business, so much so that the biggest e-sports tournaments are now providing payouts of nearly $25 million, according to Gamespot, offering salaries that rival or surpass many professional athletes.; 4/2/19, 9:55 PM
Amy Welborn said...: Yeah, my son is a senior in a Catholic high school here down South and just a few weeks ago, twin brothers dropped out - seniors - to game professionally. He said they'd missed so much school gaming that they probably weren't going to graduate anyway.; 4/2/19, 10:45 PM
wildswan said...: The trouble is that when you game for hours someone else has to do all that other stuff for you - Shovel snow, take out trash, cook, wash dishes, organize life. So when you are too old to have your parents do that for you, then what do you do? People I know started by gaming and ended up with good jobs in the computer industry, wife, family, children. But they stopped serious gaming. Luckily, they were able to to stop, to see why they wanted to, and had to, stop. (to get a wife). How can you tell whether someone is going so far in that they can't get back out and start to run their own life? 21C problems.; 4/2/19, 11:56 PM
StephenFearby said...: '“I think he made it through three days of high school and he had issues every day that he was there — either being distracted in class because people wanted his attention or feeling like he had to be Sceptic at school,” [his mother] said.'

Consistent with ADHD, either inattentive or combined type. The inattentive type particularly feels comfortable hyperfocusing on things that interest them. Gaming on a computer would reduce his distraction.

ADHD can also be comorbid with other DSM issues, including anxiety (which is a problem with him) or OCD.

He may also a night owl:

Atten Defic Hyperact Disord. 2019 Mar;11(1):5-19.

The role of the circadian system in the etiology and pathophysiology of ADHD: time to redefine ADHD?

"...Ultimately, the main question is addressed: whether ADHD needs to be redefined. We propose a novel view on ADHD, where a part of the ADHD symptoms are the result of chronic sleep disorders, with most evidence for the delayed circadian rhythm as the underlying mechanism. This substantial subgroup should receive treatment of the sleep disorder in addition to ADHD symptom treatment."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30927228

Bright light therapy and morning exercise can certainly help a certain percentage of ADHD night owls but ignores the fundamental basis for why the brain doesn't work correctly.

Which very likely is inflammatory damage...which could come from either the familial inheritance of a poorly modulated immune system or a tramautic brain injury or living in an area with heavily polluted air or combinations of same.

Familial inheritance data:

Psychiatr Genet. 2019 Apr;29(2):37-43.

Familial association of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder with autoimmune diseases in the population of Sweden.

"...We wanted to estimate associations of 42 autoimmune diseases with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) between individuals and family members.

Among a total of 86 493 patients, 18 153 had a family history of autoimmune diseases. ADHD was associated with 14 autoimmune diseases in the first-degree relatives, including ankylosing spondylitis (standardized incidence ratio:1.13), celiac disease (1.16), Crohn's disease (1.07), diabetes mellitus type 1 (1.19), discoid lupus erythematosus (1.26), glomerular nephritis chronic (1.13), Hashimoto/hypothyroidism (1.11), lupoid hepatitis (1.44), multiple sclerosis (1.11), psoriasis (1.18), Reiter's disease (1.38), rheumatoid arthritis (1.07), Sjögren's syndrome (1.21), and ulcerative colitis (1.05).

CONCLUSION:
Familial associations with several autoimmune diseases suggest genetic sharing and challenge to gene identification.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30407269

Trump could be described as having symptoms of ADHD and definitely has a long-standing inflammatory issue (Rosacea). For which he takes the antibiotic tetracycline.; 4/3/19, 12:02 AM
Joan said...: StephenFearby, Griffin's problems at school weren't because he has ADHD, they were because he's a YouTube celebrity. How much work do you think a teacher could coax out of her students if there was a movie star in the class? Being a YouTube celeb has even more sway with today's young people. They are not so into movies, but very much into YouTube channels and gaming. I can see how Griffin would be pressured to "be" Sceptic at school. He is Sceptic, after all, and most people don't realize it's a persona he puts on for his channel/streaming.

That said: yuck. I teach junior high, and stories like this give my students the idea that a career like this is not just possible but desirable. The fact is, Griffin isolates himself from all normal social interactions. That's going to catch up to him, sooner or later. And yet... (the gripping hand) I don't blame him for bailing on tradiational high school. It's horrible. A huge waste of time for most kids, and at least he's avoiding the worst of the indoctrination.

$200,000+ a year is nothing to sneeze at, if the business model holds up... which it will until YouTube restructures and screws over its content providers, again. There is certainly a lot to process in this story! I'm still glad none of my kids are so into gaming that they're advocating for it as a career for themselves.; 4/3/19, 1:22 AM
Henry said...: Don't think it's been said yet -- you have to have amazing motor skills and mental focus to game at a pro level. A kid like Spikoski is akin to a young Chloe Kim or Alison Kraus.; 4/3/19, 5:54 AM
Henry said...: I think I've linked to this before, but for a perspective about pro gaming & youtubing at a different level, I recommend this ESPN article about Tyler "Ninja" Blevins.

Living The Stream

This is a guy who is married, smart, sane. His career is a mix of gaming and entertainment and he's self-employed:

Blevins compares himself to the owner of a small business, and the only product is Ninja. He weighs every decision to leave his computer -- to travel to a celebrity-heavy event like the Pro-Am in Los Angeles or even to visit family -- against the financial repercussions. "When we decide whether I'm going to an event, the pay has to be there," he says. "If it's not paid, how much clout are you going to get? Are you going to be networking? Is that networking worth $70,000?" At the same time, there's the constant threat of fading popularity. "The more breaks [streamers] take," he says, "the less they stream, the less they're relevant."; 4/3/19, 6:30 AM
mtrobertslaw said...: I don't think this will end well.; 4/3/19, 9:28 AM
madAsHell said...: Scott Adam's comments about simulators seem relevant here.; 4/3/19, 10:19 AM
Jack Klompus said...: I could've gotten paid to play Sea Battle on Intellivision?!; 4/3/19, 10:35 AM
Unknown said...: My son was a pro gamer for two years. He made enough money to travel a bit then quit. He said the few top pros who make good money 1) have a special gift that makes them stand apart from the merely supergood players, and 2)get up at 6 a.m. and do nothing else but play one game all day long. They can't play any other game lest they become deskilled at their money making game. And there are millions of newcomers breathing down their necks, so they have to work constantly to keep their skills sharp. He found the life too limiting ("There's more to life than 'World of Tanks.' "); 4/3/19, 12:05 PM
DavidD said...: “Most of high school was a waste for him. He knew what he wanted to do and the classes that helped him reach his goal were where he put in the effort.”

38 years in IT later, the most useful class for me in high school was the 1/2 year of personal typing.; 4/3/19, 5:56 PM